What is the Beloved Community? Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. described the triple evils of racism, militarization, and economic exploitation. The Beloved Community is free of these three evils: it is anti-racist, practices active non-violence, and reconciles historical economic injustices. But it also values the positive attributes that all communities should be able to enjoy, ones that rejuvenate the earth and people’s health and wholeness. Ones that regenerate the soils by sequestering carbon back into the ground, and value people over profits, allowing humans to simply consume foods with nutrients that promote health. Instead, foods are processed and packaged with toxins, additives, and an imbalance of nutrients that do not match the level of physical activity undertaken by most people in today’s society. We have industrialized food systems that have been built through systemic racism, on the backs of slave labor - fertilized with chemicals produced for warfare - that degrade health and impoverish soil, people and planet. While 1.5 billion acres of land was stolen from Indigenous nations in the U.S. between 1776 and 1887[1], today, “white people own 98 percent of all farmland, or about 50 times the number of acres owned by people of color.”[2] Meanwhile, “over 60 percent of farmworkers are people of color, largely Latinx.”[3] 1.34% of farmers in the United States are Black, while the Black population across the country is around 13.4%.”[4] Of the 139 Black farmers among the over 57,000 farmers in New York State, as of the 2017 USDA Census of Agriculture, Black farmers earned a total net cash farm income of -$906, while white farmers earned $42,875.[5]
The Beloved Community is one that supports Black,
Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in owning and farming land that allows
them to produce wealth and grow food that can be used to nourish communities.
It is one that supports Black people in reclaiming their African roots and
allows us to share across cultures without assuming that the privileged with education,
food, and racist cultural practices should dominate society.
We achieve the Beloved Community by abiding by the King
Philosophy. The King Philosophy includes the Triple Evils, Six Principles of
Nonviolence, Six Steps of Nonviolent Social Change and the Beloved Community.[6] We also acknowledge the steps for anti-racist
practices outlined by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi in “How to Be an Anti-Racist.”
Mindful
Eating for the Beloved Community, then, is a way of eating conscientiously.
It entails understanding and recognizing our interconnectedness and
relationships at a profoundly deep level, so much so that we see the food we
eat and the systems that food comes from is tied to the well-being of our
brothers and sisters of different ethnic and economic backgrounds than our own,
in different parts of our country and different countries altogether. It is a way of eating that starts with
gratitude for the food in front of us - but does not stop there. It
acknowledges that people have access to food of differing nutrient quality
depending on their level of privilege, which leads to different health outcomes
among different populations. It
acknowledges that companies that own the land and production resources have the
most control over the wealth and health of communities. It acknowledges that
people of color have less access to the resources that would enable them to own
and lead companies, and are often relegated to positions that the privileged do
not want, such as harvesting the food in dangerous working conditions, without
being provided adequate wages or healthcare benefits. Mindful Eating for the Beloved Community
entails considering all of these factors mindfully as we eat the food in front
of us, but then going a step further to use the nourishment from the food eaten
to sustain us in actualizing systemic changes to correct these injustices.
[1] Northeast
Farmers of Color Land Trust https://nefoclandtrust.org/our-work
[2] Civil
Eats https://civileats.com/2020/02/24/an-enormous-land-transition-is-underway-heres-how-to-make-it-just/
[3] Civil
Eats https://civileats.com/2020/02/24/an-enormous-land-transition-is-underway-heres-how-to-make-it-just/
[4] Black
Farmer Fund https://www.blackfarmerfund.org/ourstory
[5]
Black Farmer Fund https://www.blackfarmerfund.org/ourstory
[6]
The King Center https://thekingcenter.org/king-philosophy/
